Autism Bill

I congratulate the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) on introducing the Bill, on the vast amount of detailed work that she has undertaken and, in particular, on her tenacity. Excellent joint working has been done across the parties and with the Government, and she has brought certain skills to that: her good humour, her diplomacy, her negotiating skills and much more. All that has brought us to the point that we have reached today. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning), who has obviously made an enormous contribution. It began long before I joined this House, but I have been very much aware of what she has done. In addition, she has been connected with quite an important organisation that serves my constituency, although it is not located within it: the Wessex Autistic Society. It is a great honour to follow her. She has brought reality to what we are discussing today and shown us just how serious some of the shortcomings are in the services for children and adults with autism. We are aware of those shortcomings and we have lots of statistics on them, but by talking about the misdiagnoses and what actually happens—the breaking up of people into little bits—we identify what we are about today: we are trying to remedy that situation. The Liberal Democrats supported the Bill on Second Reading and made it clear that we wanted to have further discussions in Committee. We wanted to do everything we could to support that process, as we felt it could only be beneficial. We did not want to rely just on the Government's promises, although I am sure that the motivations behind those were good. We needed to ensure that the Bill had more bite in order to ensure that we made progress. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Erewash (Liz Blackman), who was graceful in expressing that we are rather pleased with this Bill—that is important. Although I played a very small part, I will have some pride in it if we are able to say that we have really changed matters. I congratulate the Ministers who have been involved, because a great deal of work has been done to reach this position, and the large number of organisations that have been involved—I should at least mention the National Autistic Society. I am sorry that I only managed to attend two Committee sittings out of three. The one that I missed was the crucial one, but I have, of course, read the Hansard record in great detail so I hope that I am fully au fait with everything. That was a very important sitting and involved the unusual situation where the promoter of the Bill proposed that her clauses be deleted and replaced by Government clauses.